Psychonauts 2 peeks at pretty plants, picks up publisher
Good rocks too
You like rocks? I'll show you nice rocks. You like trees? I'll show you nice trees. You like squirrels? I'll show you nice squirrels. All these and more are in a new Psychonauts [official site] dev video showing an art test of a quarry environment. It's not a finished level, just Double Fine feeling out the game's style, but some pretty stuff is in there.
Over in the world of #business, Double Fine have announced that Psychonauts 2 will be published by Starbreeze, the Brothers and Payday mob. But first, look at these rocks.
Nice rocks, yeah? I'll be jolly pleased if the rest of the game ends up with a style like this. Double Fine explain in a post that the Psychonauts HQ will be within a lush, Pacific Northwest-y forest and have spaces to explore outside it. This video shows of an art test for some places that might be nice to poke around, though Double Fine are quite clear that we're not seeing an actual Psychonauts 2 level here:
"It's important to note that this 'Quarry Map,' as we called it, is throwaway work. While we expect Raz will visit places that look a lot like this, the exact layout and construction here isn't meant to ship as part of the game. It’s important to do this for early work so we don’t lock ourselves into any early decisions we aren’t quite ready to make. (This is also why the area is much more linear than we expect our game to be.)"
Double Fine pumped out a short explanation of how they create 3D assets for that painterly style.
As for Starbreeze, yup, they're now publishing Psychonauts 2. Their announcement says they're putting $8 million into Psychonauts 2, topping up the $3.8 million Double Fine got in crowdfunding pledges and investments through Fig at the end of 2015. Big fancy 3D platformers aren't cheap to make, you know.
Psychonauts 2 is due to launch in 2018.